The Olive Morris Memorial Awards were organised by the Remembering Olive Collective (ROC) to celebrate the legacy of black woman activist Olive Morris. The Awards were created as an opportunity to celebrate the spirit of Olive Morris as it lives on in the work of a new generation of young women activists.

Women aged between 16 and 27 years of age, of African or Asian descent and involved in grassroots political work of any nature were nominated for the awards by their friends, colleagues or mentors.

Awardees:

Brenda May Goodchild, an artist creating powerful art for the current campaigns against the criminalisation of squatting in England and Wales;

Ria Hylton, involved in the Movement for Justice campaign against the deportation of Edson Comas;

Mirella, working with So We Stand, a UK-wide popular education collective focusing on struggles for environmental and social justice;

Nim Ralph, active on environmental campaigns So We Stand, Climate Camp and with MOSAIC, a member-led black and mixed parentage anti-racist group;

Rukayah Sarumi, who has organised lectures on black feminism and the history of the women’s movement in Britain and is now active in Streatham Labour Party; and

Iman Hussein for her work in the Guides Movement challenging its lack of diversity and with Roots a self-education Black History collective of 6th form college pupils.

Event details:

The awards event took place at 7 – 9.30 on Friday 2 December 2011 at The Karibu Education Centre, 7 Gresham Road, London, SW9 7PH
Tickets £3 Inclusive of food
Live DJ set by JDA Kut

Former ROC member Nadja Middleton will be making a presentation about Olive Morris and the work of ROC at the unveiling of a new plaque on the Museum’s Black Achievers Wall dedicated to Olive Morris.

The Black Achievers Wall in the Legacy gallery at the International Slavery Museum is a celebration of Black Achievers past and present. These people represent a real mix of backgrounds, eras and disciplines, from civil rights campaigners and politicians to rock stars and poets. Some are household names like Bob Marley. Others, like rebel slave leader Gaspar Yanga, are virtually unknown to the general public, but all are inspirational.

Parallel to Third Streaming’s exhibition Film Still Highlights from The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, former ROC member Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen will take part in the panel discussion Black Power Remix. Black Power Remix is a conversation on contemporary cultural activism and the role of art and artists. Rico Gatson, Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen, Donna Murch and Minkah Makalani will discuss their work and experience on the topic. Nguyen will focus on the history of the British Black Panther, Olive Morris, and the work by the Remembering Olive Collective.

The Remembering Olive Collective (ROC) is delighted to invite nominations for the Olive Morris Memorial Award. In the spirit of Olive’s life and work, 3 awards of £500 each will be given to young women engaged in radical grassroots political activity.

Olive Morris was an inspirational community activist in 1970s Britain, who died at the young age of 27 leaving behind a significant legacy, that the Remembering Olive Collective seeks to honor. Olive was a member of the British Black Panthers, as well as a founding member of the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD) and the Brixton Black Women’s Group. The breadth of her political work went from her pioneer role in the local squatter campaigns in South London, through to organising with Black women and the student movement in London and Manchester, to supporting liberation movements in the Third World.

Criteria

Nominees must be engaged in radical grassroots political work of any nature. For example, as organisers, advocates, activists, lobbyists or being themselves victims of repression for their political activities. Charitable work is not eligible, unless it is part of a wider and demonstrable radical politics agenda. Nominees must be women who are between 16 and 27 years of age and of African or Asian descent, currently living in the UK. This is meant in a broad geo-political sense that may include, for example, Palestinian women. All women who fall under the above category shall be considered regardless of their nationality and immigration status.

Nomination process

Anyone can nominate a woman for the award, provided they complete all the information requested in the nomination form. Downlaod Nomination Form

There will be a public award ceremony held at a London venue towards the end of October 2011, with details to be confirmed closer to the date.

The Remembering Olive Collective is a group of women of diverse ages and backgrounds that was active from 2008-2010, dedicated to preserving and reactivating the memory of Olive Morris and the political movements she was part of. The Olive Morris Memorial Award is ROC’s final public appearance, bringing to a close an intense period of work, whose main outcome was the creation of the Olive Morris Collection at Lambeth Archives.

The Olive Morris Collection is housed at Lambeth Archives and any queries regarding research materials about Olive Morris or any of the groups she was involved with should be directed to them.

7.30pm Special Reading by Boni Sones (Executive Producer, Women’s Parliamentary Radio) from her Orwell Prize-nominated book Women in Parliament: the New Suffragettes
As part of the Tricycle Theatre’s season Women, Power and Politics, norn explores the role of women in British politics from the Suffragettes to the present day.
The exhibition is a celebration of women who have made a positive political impact in the UK over the last century, whether within or outside governmental frameworks. Incorporating rarely-seen archival material of the women’s suffrage movement; political activist Olive Morris’s campaigns for the rights of the black community; and the long battle of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp against nuclear proliferation. The exhibition also features a little-known 1974 film by the London Women’s Film Group which examines the status of women’s labour under capitalism, together with a series of contemporary interviews from Women’s Parliamentary Radio.

ROC member Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen participated in Chelsea Programme’s Solidarity Camp!, featuring an invited group of artists, curators and thinkers to consider contemporary European responses to the notion of ‘solidarity,’ as part of the Transeuropa festival.
If we accept that mainstream political and social responses to the ongoing demographic and cultural shifts within Europe promote the idea that ‘solidarity’ with ‘others’ is impossible/undesirable how do we reframe the debate? What solidarities are needed now? How do we counter a system which encourages people not to see what they have in common, but only their differences? Is solidarity an outdated concept? If not, what needs to be done in order to encourage the creation of transnational, multi ethnic solidarity? If so, do we need to invent another concept to replace it?

ROC member Nadja Middleton will be making a presentation about Olive Morris and the work of ROC at the unveiling of three new plaques on the Black Achievers Wall.

The Black Achievers Wall in the Legacy gallery at the International Slavery Museum is a celebration of Black Achievers past and present. These people represent a real mix of backgrounds, eras and disciplines, from civil rights campaigners and politicians to rock stars and poets. Some are household names like Bob Marley. Others, like rebel slave leader Gaspar Yanga, are virtually unknown to the general public, but all are inspirational.

FRIDAY 26 MARCH 2010
Nettlefold Hall, 1 Norwood High Street, West Norwood, London SE27 9JX
7.00 DOORS OPEN
7.30 PM FILM START
8.30 PM Q&A WITH YOUNG PEOPLE WHO MADE THE FILM

Free but limited places – please arrive on time. Donations welcomed.

ROC Celebrates International Women’s Month presenting the South London premier of “Hidden Herstories: Women of Change”, a youth-led documentary film and heritage project which looks at four influential women who haven’t had their rightful place in the history books.

Brown bag
Do you remember Olive Morris?
That is the organizing principle around the work of the Remembering Olive Collective, based in Brixton, a predominately Afro-Caribbean community in London. This brown bag will explore questions of generation, telling stories, and hagiographies around black liberation movement figures.

ALL WOMEN WELCOME. Our group continues to meet, and welcomes new women of all ages and backgrounds. Meetings sometimes include talks by women who knew Olive Morris and come to share their memories of Olive but also their own histories. The meetings are also an opportunity to get updates, and to discuss future activities and help steer the direction of the project.

Our February meeting will be longer as we will be looking at the year ahead and deciding what do we want to concentrate on, as well as looking at improving the way in which we work collectivelly. If you plan to come, bring something to eat and drink as it will be a longer session than usual.

The exhibition is accompanied by a full programme of events organised by the Remembering Olive Collective and a programme of free film screenings. See attachements for further information and details on the events and screenings listed below:

Closing event of the exhibition and launch of the publication Do you remember Olive Morris? There will be a poetry slam for young people on themes inspired by Olive Morris story, with a cash prize for the winner.

Image: Cover of the Do you remember Olive Morris? publication, design by Inua Ellams.

SATURDAY 16 JANUARY, 2-5PM
Financing the Revolution

How does one fund work of a radical nature? What happens to community initiatives when public and charitable funding dries up, or imposes their own agenda? Contributors:

Carolyn, a member of Remembering Olive Collective, on low-budget/zero-budget organising.

Andi Elsner: Founder member and former Treasurer of indymedia uk. Indymedia is network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues. They provide free media infraestructure for communication of social and political movements, and are completely self-funded through a combination of individual donations, fundraising events and volunteering.

Onyekachi Wambu (AFFORD) on the challenges of fundraising to support indigenous economic development in Africa. Onyekachi Wambu is a journalist, editor and television producer. Born in Nigeria, he has worked as a journalist since 1983 and was Editor of The Voice at the end of the 1980s. His film Hopes on the Horizon: the Rise of the New Africa, received the Golden Dhow Award 2002 for Best Documentary. Recently he edited Under the Tree of Talking: Leadership for Change in Africa, and has worked since 2002 for the African Foundation for Development (AFFORD), a charity established to expand and enhance the contributions Africans in the diaspora make to Africa’s development. AFFORD was forced to look into new models of raising funds, in order to pursue lines of work not favoured by Western donors.

Sandra Hurst on financial literacy for Black liberation. After studying at a law centre for several years & reading for a law degree, Sandra decided that she would prefer to spend more time with her sons than lawyers. So she made a simple decision to extracate herself from the financial ‘rat race’ that keeps millions of people trapped in constant cycles of debt & despair. Her research led her to study several established financial systems to realise her goal, but having become disheartened by misleading advice claiming that more money will solve financial problems, she soon saw that even becoming a millionaire can still keep people in the rat race. Her strategy studies 5 major definitions of wealth, which combine to form our subconscious attitudes and reactions to money: financial, intellectual, interpersonal, physical & spiritual.

THURSDAY 14 JANUARY, 7-9PM
The Heart of the Race: Oral Histories of the Black Women’s Movement

The Heart of the Race’s author Stella Dadzie, Kelly Foster and Mia Morris from the Black Cultural Archives introduce this year-long oral history project documenting the activism of Black women in the UK.

In Olive Morris’ Brixton, self-education initiatives challenged the failings of standard comprehensive education for Black children. Members of ROC will be joined by a diverse group of educators to explore and exchange different approaches towards learning, across sectors and communities. This open, round table discussion will be initiated by a film screening.

Photography courtesy of Ego Ahaiwe.
Visiting some of the places where Olive did things, and learning more about her, and Brixton’s history. The bike tour will end at Gasworks in time for the 2pm event.

Housing Matters, 2-5PM

Image courtesy of Julia Morandeira.

Olive Morris years as a squatter signaled the start of her life-long committment to campaigning for the right of all people to a decent home. This event investigates how housing has changed since her times, and what forms of struggle have been adopted. We will hear from some of the people who have been involved in those struggles, with a Q&A session with groups who provide advice to tenants, squatters and the homeless, including Lambeth Defend Council Housing campaign, the Latin American Housing Coop, London Coalition Against Poverty, and the Advisory Service For Squatters.

Documenting Migration is an event looking at the way in which records and documents of migration are kept and used by official bodies and by migrants themselves, and their importance in framing public opinion and policy.

The event will start with a interactive quiz game looking to explore and break down popular assumptions about migration in the UK. This will be followed by two presentations and an open discussion.

Image courtesy of Jessica Mustachi.

The first presentation will be a video interview with Dr Mary Stevens, honorary research associate in the School of Library, Archive and Information Studies at University College London, who will be discussing the historical context of the preservation of migrants’ records in the UK.

The second presentation will be delivered by Marula Di Como from the Berlin-based women’s collective Migrantas; a collective which works with issues of migration, identity and intercultural dialogue, incorporating tools from the visual arts, graphic design and social sciences. See http://www.migrantas.org for more info.

Image courtesy of Jessica Mustachi.

The event will be followed by a screening of the Black Audio Collective’s rarely seen film Signs of Empire (1984).

As well as joining us for conversation, we invite you to bring pamphlets, flyers and publications about your organisation and its current activities. If you are unable to attend, we would still greatly appreciate if you could send through any relevant publications or materials that you may want to share.

The exhibition has a display area for the distribution of free leaflets and pamphlets and a resource library for which donations are welcome. We will be publishing an online, downloadable report on the event, and we are keen to include in it any materials you wish to contribute.

MONDAY 16 NOVEMBER, 7-8.30PM
The Empty Gallery Interviews
A live conversation piece in which art writers Claire Nichols and Altair Roelants talk to artist Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre and other ROC members about the upcoming exhibition Do you remember Olive Morris?

THURSDAY 26 NOVEMBER, 7-9PM
Artist Talk
Sonia Boyce talks about her project Devotional – a celebration of Black female singers in British entertainment – and her involvement in the Remembering Olive Collective.

FILMS ON DEMAND
If you want to come in individually or as a group and watch films outside of screening times, you can organise your own screening at Gasworks with the view-on-demand film library. A member of staff will provide you with technical support and access to a list of films including Dread, Beat an’ Blood, From You Were Black, You Were Out and Grove Roots, as well a selection of YouTube clips.

For more information and to arrange a suitable time if you are coming with a group, please contact: info@gasworks.org.uk Tel: 020 7582 6848

A full house at the launch in Brixton Library. Photography courtesy of Alexandra Molano.

Do you remember Olive Morris?

After many months of research and interviewing those who knew Olive, the Remembering Olive Collective and Lambeth Archives are proud to be launching a public archive dedicated to Olive Morris and the different groups and campaigns she was part of. The collection includes Olive’s personal papers deposited by Liz Obi and over 20 oral history interviews. It will be permanently hosted at Lambeth Archives.

The event speakers include Jon Newman (Lambeth Archives), Yana Morris (Olive’s sister), Mike McColgan (Olive’s partner), a presentation about Olive’s life and the materials included in the Olive Morris Collection by Dr. Kimberly Springer (ROC member), and a performance by award-winning poet Dorothea Smartt.

The oral history and cataloguing project and the production of a publication that will be launched early in 2010, has been generously funded by an award from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The project has been supported by Lambeth Archives and Gasworks. The project’s advisers and partners also include the Black Cultural Archives, Brixton Library, Lambeth Women’s Project and the British Library.

Radical Brixton: Following on Olive steps
Tuesday 15 September 2009, 5.30pm gathering outside Olive Morris House, 18 Brixton Hill
A memorial walk in Brixton led by ROC members Ego and Carolyn, visiting places that are associated with Olive Morris and the organisations she was part of. Here are some pictures of ROC members during a research / test walk back in July.

Stall at Lambeth Country Show
Date: Saturday 18 and Sunday 19 July 2009
Venue: Brockwell Park, Brixton
ROC will again be holding a stall at this popular local event this summer. Look out for us at Lambeth Arts & Culture Tent. We have some lovely merchandise you can buy to support our work, and you will be able to learn more about Olive Morris and the history of Brixton.

On the anniversary of Olive Morris death we will convene for breakfast in a public space at the heart of Brixton, the area formerly known as The Triangle or The Frontline, a space emblematic of the struggle and resistance of Brixon Black community. ROC members will set up a breakfast table to remember Olive, who lived most of her adult life just steps away, at 121 Railton Road and 2 Talma Road squats. This area is now part of a Dispersal Zone that actually extends to almost all of the town centre and enables police officers and Police Community Support Officers to disperse groups of two or more people, who might be perceived to be causing intimidation and committing anti-social behaviour.

The Olive Morris memorial breakfast borrows the model of the permanent breakfast, a open source project launched in 1996 in Austria and since then it has been appropriated and recreated all over the world, from Chile to Papua New Guinea, from Norway to Chechnia, as a way of reclaiming public space, and to bring people together for a variety of reasons: rememberance, activism or purely for the pleasure of sharing some time together in an open space without paying money for it. http://www.permanentbreakfast.org

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Presentation at Women Making History event
Date: Saturday 11 July 2009, 1.30 – 4.45pm
Venue: Museum in Docklands, No1 Warehouse, West India Quay, London E14 4AL
There is no entrance fee to the museum for conference participants

ROC will be making a presentation at this one day participatory conference led by London women from different communities and generations, looking at what women in London have lost and gained over the past 50 years and what we need to create momentum to change.

Other presenters and speakers include:

Golden Oldies – a group for elders of Caribbean origin. They’ve been meeting on the Walworth Road, South London for around 13 years.

Shravika Satsang Mandal from the Wembley area in North West London is a collective of Asian women of East African origin who meet weekly to practice yoga, reflexology, share food and spiritual and reflective literature together. It was founded by Vilasgauri Dhanani in 1973 whose aim has always been to use a holistic approach to life and health to empower Asian women.

Young women from the Sir John Cass Foundation & Red Coats School who have been meeting the Golden Oldies and Shravika Satsang Mandal, discussing and creating work together.

Dorothea Smartt is of Barbadian (aka Bajan) heritage. Dubbed ‘Brit-born Bajan international’ [Kamau Brathwaithe], she was Brixton Market’s first Poet-in-Residence, and a former Attached Live Artist at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts. http://www.britbornbajan.com

The Women’s Library exists to document and explore women’s lives in Britain in the past, present and future, and houses the most extensive resource for women’s history in the UK.

ROC was invited to present the ways in which the Do you remember Olive Morris project has used web 2.0 technologies (including this blog) to organise, and to document and make public the history of Olive Morris.

The presentation is part of a half-day workshop aimed at independent and community heritage practitioners has been organised as a joint initiative between the Community Archives research team at the Department of Information Studies at UCL and UntoldLondon.org.uk. Uniting researchers and heritage practitioners from culturally-diverse communities, it aims to map out “an emerging terrain” and prepare for a more inclusive future. Digital Preservation is a matter of real concern for independent minority archives at work in the UK today. Grounded in transnational diasporas, many groups have been quick to embrace the possibilities of user-generated content and digital collections. Equally, such groups often lack the infrastructure to ensure sustainability. The risk is a double marginalisation – a hidden history and a disappearing future.

ROC gave an interactive workshop / presentation at Comic Relief, as part of their Staff Learning Week. They were tipped about our project by one of their volunteers, who recommended us as an interesting event to introduce staff to a bit of the socio-political history Lambeth history. In the pictures you can see Comic Relief employees busily charting Olive’s life during a time-line excercise.

A group of ROC members and supporters got together to take part in a performance by artist Paola Pivi, as part of Tate Modern’s Long Weekend. The performance involved 1000 people on the mezzanine bridge above the Turbine Hall screaming as loudly as possible, hence the title ‘1000′. The interesting addition of the people involved in the work that they come from groups such as Free Tibet and are screaming as a form of protest, and to raise funds for their organisations. We raised a whooping £240 – thanks to all who came along to help!

A generous grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund will support a training programme in Oral History and Archiving, as part of the Do you remember Olive Morris?. The grant will benefit the members of ROC (Remembering Olive Collective) who will be conducting over 25 interviews with those who knew Olive Morris. The interviews will be deposited as part of a newly created archive collection at Lambeth Archives, centred on Olive Morris. The archive, whose core is formed by a collection of documents donated by Liz Obi, will be catalogued and complemented by ROC and subsequently be made available at Lambeth Archives for permanent public use.

The project is supported by Gasworks & Triangle Arts Trust and Lambeth Archives. The project’s advisers also include the Black Cultural Archives and Brixton Library.

ROC members run a workshop on Olive Morris at the Race, privilege and identity gathering taking place in Bristol. The gathering aimed to engage with issues of race, privilege and identity in DIY feminist communities through building dialogue, coalitions and resources.

Olive Morris was also featured in an exhibition display prepared by Lambeth Archives and displayed at Brixton Library during March 2009.

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12 March: Nightcleaners Part I: A Woman’s Work – Film Screening and panel discussion
This event is part of Celebrating Women in Southwark, and starts with a public screening of Nightcleaners: Part 1, a rarely seen experimental film from 1972 by the Berwick Street Collective (Marc Karlin, Mary Kelly, James Scott and Humphry Trevelyan). Free but booking essential: southwarknights@gmail.com

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14 March: Women and the Archive – A partial disclosure
Members of ROC will be talking about the Do you remember Olive Morris project at this conference at The Women’s Library organised in collaboration with the Whitechapel Art Gallery. Women and the Archive: A Partial Disclosure presents four perspectives on the relationship between women and the archive in contemporary artistic production. Artists, collectives and researchers using archives as source material or constituting archives as their primary activity are invited to present their rarely shown collections of photographs, videos and audio recordings around women of artistic, social and political importance. Issues of provenance, methodology, property and historicisation will be addressed throughout the afternoon via
presentations, screenings, performances and a panel discussion.

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28 March: Black Women and the Radical Tradition Conference
ROC member Dr Kimberly Springer will be presenting a paper on Olive Morris at this conference held at the Graduate Center for Worker Education at Brooklyn College. Other presenters include Angela Davis, Carole Boyce Davies.
For more information visit: http://www.blackwomen2009.org/

Join us for a memorable evening in the heart of Brixton, to listen first hand to the stories of former Black Panthers from the US and the UK, and to view an exhibition of Black Panther’s original artwork and photographs.

EMORY DOUGLAS – Former Minister of Culture of the Black Panthers Party; Black Panther/Black Liberation artist and designer of the Black Panther newspaper

BILLY X JENNINGS – Head of the US Black Panther Alumni

NEIL KENLOCK – Official photographer of the Brixton Black Panther Movement, and founder of Choice FM

ELAINE HOLNESS – Director of the Karibu Education Centre, originally founded as the Abeng Centre by the Rev. Tony Ottey in the 1970s to offer supplementary schooling and youth services to local children.

KODWO ESHUN – Writer and theorist, acclaimed author of More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction, and co-founder of The Otolith Group. Currently working on a photo essay about representation of Black Panthers in film.

CLARENCE THOMPSON – One of the founding fathers of the 1965 Race Relations Act and renowned dramatic poet.

The event will pay homage to the memory of Olive Morris, a Brixton-based Black Panther and women’s rights activist, who died tragically young leaving behind a remarkable legacy.

Tickets: £10 at the door / £ 7 advance sales / £ 5 under 18s
This event is a fundraiser for the Remembering Olive Collective and the Panther Alumni projects in the U.S. and the entry fee includes refreshments.

*N.B The seating at this event is limited. Please book in advance to avoid disappointment.

Emory Douglas, former Minister of Culture in the Black Panther Party, is perhaps the person most responsible for conveying the politics of the Panthers into the mass consciousness of Black people in the USA and the oppressed across the world. Emory Douglas’ beautiful and striking art-work in the Panther’s newspaper conveyed the politics of the movement which embodied the humanity, defiance and revolutionary continuities of oppressed Black people in the US and their support for struggles across the world. Read his interview in Times Online and the Guardian online.

In the UK, Neil Kenlock took up the camera to document the life of the Black community during the 60s and the 70s, and the activities of his fellow Black Panthers. He amassed an extraordinary body of work that includes portraits of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Mohamed Ali, and other important Black leaders, and that has rarely been exhibited. This will be a unique opportunity to see Neil’s photographs and to hear him talk about his political and creative motivations.

Kodwo Eshun is an artist, theorist and writer. He is the author of More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction (Quartet, 1998) and editor of The Ghosts of Songs: The Film Art of The Black Audio Film Collective (2007). He is the co-founder of the artist collective The Otolith Group whose work was presented at Documenta 12 and can be currently be seen at the 7th Shanghai Biennale and Between the Images: Imaginable Experiences fro Future Memories at IASPIS, Stockholm. He is currently completing 2 books: Hat and Beard: A Photo Essay on the Cinematic Imaginary of the Black Panthers, to be published by Bookworks and a study of Dan Graham’s Rock My Religion to be published by AfterAll in their One Work series. Kodwo Eshun is Director of the MA in Aural and Visual Cultures in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College.

This event is organised by the Remembering Olive Collective (ROC), with support from the Black Panther Commemoration Committee in England (BPCC).

ROC is a Brixton-based group, made up of women of different ages and backgrounds, whose main aim is to create public and permanent memories of Olive Morris. Together we research and document the history of Olive Morris and her times, and we learn about each other and about women’s histories and why it is important that we keep them alive.

The BPCC work towards keeping the experience and legacy of the Black Panthers alive for current and future generation

For more information phone us or email us on the contact listed below.

Do you remember Olive Morris? will be holding a stall at the launch of Black History Month in Southwark. In addition to the stalls, there will be performances by the Tribute Trust, Children of Zion and Exodus Dance Companies, Carl Campbell Dance Company 7, poet and singer Khadijatou Doyneh and a keynote presentation by one the UK’s leading historians; Steve Martin. Personal motivator and author, Kola Olutimehin, will give closing words. The day will end with the opportunity to network and enjoy mouth watering, homemade Caribbean cuisine.

Led by artist Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre, a group of 15 young women aged 14-18 will research the history of inspiring Black women connected to South London’s history, such as Olive Morris, Una Marson and Sojourner Truth. Together they will create a series of posters to display in schools and community centres. The workshop consists of 5 sessions (2 hours each) and is free, but booking is essential.

A round-table discussion as part of the TINAG Festival (This is not a gateway) with presentations by women involved in the Do you remember Olive Morris project. Speakers: Liz Obi (community activist), Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre (artist), Kelly Foster (Black Cultural Archives), Anna Colin (curator Gasworks).

From 1-2.30 pm and following on from the Do you remember Olive Morris Salon, Mustafa Traore and young people from various social justice groups in France will introduce their work: Integration of the Muslim subculture in Britain at the dawn of the 21st century; from theory to practice, comparing the situation experienced by young migrants in France. Exploring challenges encountered when working for better social cohesion in the different districts and suburbs of Paris.

The TINAG festival seeks to promote and enable dialogue and collaboration amongst emerging practitioners working on and in cities, in interdisciplinary and bottom-up ways. For more information about TINAG FESTIVAL visit: www.thisisnotagateway.net

The Volunteers Group will start to meet regularly at Lambeth’s Women Project (166A Stockwell Road), the first Wednesday of every month. The group is open to women of all ages who are passionate about black and women’s history and are willing and able to contribute to the project with either time, historical knowledge, great ideas or useful skills. Our first official meeting will be on Wednesday 6 August from 6.30 to 9.00 pm.

On Saturday 12 July we joined the Morris family on a memorial visit to Streatham Park Cemetery. We gathered to pay our respects to the memory of Olive Morris on the anniversary of her death. Family and friends paid tribute planting flowers, and with informal speeches, poetry readings and prayers. You can see some pictures at: http://www.rememberolivemorris.wordpress.com. If you were there and took some nice photos please email me some and I will upload them to the blog. Brixton artist Claudia Wegener did a sound recording of the visit and we will put it online soon for those who couldn’t join in the day.

The cemetery visit was also an opportunity to talk about the recent developments at Olive Morris House, which as you probably already know has been extensively refurbished. The building has retained Olive’s name but the public area has been re-branded as the Brixton Customer Service Centre. After some discussion on the pros and cons of having Olive’s name attached to the building, the Morris family volunteered to lead a petition to request that an informative memorial to Olive Morris is installed in a location visible to the general public. Yana Morris is in the process of creating the petition letter.

Liz Obi and myself (with the support of Gasworks, the Black Cultural Archives and Lambeth Arts) have been liaising with Lambeth Corporate Communications and the Customer Service Teams for the last 6 months. We have submitted several ideas and proposals to create a memorial to Olive Morris on the public area of the building (a reconstruction of Liz Obi’s exhibition, plus a bronze bust of Olive as a monument to youth). Unfortunately, we haven’t been successful in gaining enough interest in our proposals, so as to implement them at Olive Morris House. The main reasons were lack of funding, and council officers’ concerns about our proposed display clashing with corporate style guidelines. We are still keen to create this public art works and have them installed somewhere in Brixton. If you have any suggestions or useful contacts please get in touch.

Liz Obi and Ashley Whitfield (a new recruit to the Volunteers Group hailing from Detroit, USA) run a stall at the Lambeth Country Show on the 19-20 July, hosted by Lambeth Arts. Liz’s exhibition was on display, and our freshly-baked Olive Morris badges were on offer. Thanks to Kelly Foster at the Black Cultural Archives for the idea – we exchange the badges for a 50 pence donation towards printing more publicity materials (the project remains unfunded and is still running entirely on people’s voluntary contributions). If you want to help sell some badges, that’d be great.

Finally, with regards to the oral history project and the exhibition, we had some delays with a funding application to the Lottery Heritage Fund that will have to be re-submitted in September. This means the project will be extended over a longer period of time, and the final exhibition at Gasworks will take place in November 2009.

On a tip by Ceri Buck (a local artist and ongoing supporter of the project), The British Library has recently approached us with the offer to archive the Olive Morris weblog as part of a project they are doing with The Women’s Library. This will mean that the contents of the blog will be preserved permanently regardless of changes in technology. The blog will also be archived at Lambeth Archives website, so all together this means that the information on the blog is both safeguarded for the future and that it reaches a wider audience.

Keep an eye on the blog as we will start updating it regularly with news and more information as it becomes available, and hope to see some of you at the Volunteers Group first meeting on the 6th of August.

Warmest regards

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7 Responses to “News and Events”

i am a male!! and was woundering if there is any kind of panther group meetings that i could attend!?? i am from brixton aswell and am very happy to have found this site!! i would be very gratefull for the help!! thanks!!

It would be nice to see more of your connections and links with radical activism in Brixton today.

There are so many projects going on, continuing the struggle, cycle activists, squatters, Food Not Bombs giving out free food.

Right behind Lambeth Archive where the ROC archive lives, is a squatted autonomous Community Centre, The Library House.
One of their activists was killed last year, aged 19 when she was cycling from Brixton to Brighton, to support the Carnival against the Arms Trade. She was a beautiful mind and brilliant and generous person, squatting near Ruskin Park. She was a cycle activist and part of Food Not Bombs and involved with several social centres across London. Maybe in twenty years time we get a plaque for her too. She is dearly missed and her family and friends are still fighting for justice.

I realise you are an archival project, but I’m sure Olive would have approved of putting the work you are doing into the context of the ongoing struggles of groups, communities and individuals.
You now have a profile and the opportunity to link the actions, projects and struggles in Brixton, Lambeth and beyond.

Thank you for your comment. As you mention, we have been mainly concerned with creating a public collection about the life of Olive Morris and the organisations she was part of, of which there was no public record available until yesterday, when we launched the collection at Lambeth Archives. We have spent a very busy year researching, interviewing people, and have a lot of material that we would like to publish on the blog but unfortunately we are all volunteers with complicated lives, and time is scarce. We try to do our best, and we hope in the future to be able to take up different type of activities, certainly we are keen to make a link with the present and this is something we have been discussing. We always welcome new women to the group too, and if you feel you or someone you know would be able to help in developing and expanding our work, please do get in touch.